It is common practice for the carton manufacturer to pre-form their carton blanks into a partially assembled container before delivery to their customer. This product has thus come to be called a pre-glued carton. These pre-glued cartons are then traditionally opened by the packaging machinery to receive the articles to be packaged therein. Because this pre-glued blank is more expensive to purchase, takes up more space in storage, is difficult to open, and is difficult to load with product, prior art attempts have been make to develop machinery that can accept fully knocked down “flat” blanks and perform the required packaging function reliably. However, these prior art machines have significant weaknesses.                1) Prior art machines choose to pre fold the blank while it was being conveyed from the carton magazine (or hopper) to the mandrel conveyor, and they choose to pre fold it on the score lines that the mandrel would first contact. This made intuitive sense because it greatly aided in controlling the blank through the folding of the blank around the mandrel. This decision then drove the need to try and fold (tuck) the manufactures joint around the mandrel. This proved to be a costly decision as it is very difficult to perform reliably.        2) Prior art machines choose to try and tuck the manufacture joint around the mandrel. This proved to be unreliable because the flap is so long transversely across the machine and short in length (usually only 0.5″). It also proved very problematic to try and get the manufactures joint tucking devise physically mounted. Room in that area of the machine is very tight and the mounting of the device caused problems in controlling the blank properly during tucking.        3) Prior art machines did not design in a manufactures joint compression mechanism that would adequately compensate for normal machine variations. As the long lengths of chain that the mandrel conveyor and the compression flight were mounted on began to wear, their alignment with respect to each other began to change. One could get the machine to compress the manufactures joint properly when the machine was new, but as it wore in, the compression alignment and force started to change.        4) The rear flight only system that the prior art machines used for transporting the carton thru end flap closing and sealing did not automatically adjust for small variations in the carton size and therefore they were not successful in repeatably producing square cartons. They used static rails to attempt to square the carton back against the rear only transport flight on the conveyor.So significant are these prior art weaknesses that very few machines were produced and no machines incorporating these technologies are known to be in production today. These prior art methods of wrapping a flat carton blank around a mandrel were simply not reliable.        